(ABP)—Social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are redefining the way many Americans build and maintain relationships—and also how their churches communicate.
In the last few years, relating to social contacts through such sites has become practically ubiquitous among the under-30 crowd, and the practice is quickly spreading upward along the demographic spectrum. Simultaneously, Christian leaders are realizing that the sites can be useful tools for youth ministry, college groups and other church groups, enabling group members to reach each other consistently and instantaneously.
That's because social-networking sites are the new coffeehouses and community centers of the Internet. Facebook, Friendster and MySpace are places where people can stay connected—in some cases, practically constantly—with what is going on in the lives of their friends, family and colleagues.
People use their online profile pages to post pictures, send messages, create events and invite people to them, and provide status updates to show what is going on in their lives. Facebook—currently the largest such site—has approximately 80 million active members, and is adding hundreds more every day.
Dale Tadlock, the 41-year-old associate pastor at First Baptist Church of Waynesboro, Va., has been in student ministry for 20 years. He said he is staying linked with his students using Facebook.
“It has given me a great opportunity to work with students,” Tadlock said. “It's become a way to stay informed.”
He even does visitation through the site. When newcomers fill out visitors' cards at his youth group meetings, many mark “Facebook” as the best way to contact them.
While on the go, Tadlock uses the Internet feature of his “smart phone” mobile device to check Facebook to find out his students' latest status. Their profiles reveal current activities, pictures they've added and other Facebook users with whom they've had recent contact.
Tadlock said his colleagues nationwide are using such sites similarly in ministry, although some do so more extensively than others.
Tim Schmoyer, youth pastor at the Evangelical Covenant Church of Alexandria, Minn., created a Facebook application—basically, a customized add-on program that can be used on the site and added to users' pages—specifically for youth groups. The application sends news updates from a youth group's web site to Facebook so the students know what is going on.
Every 30 minutes, the program checks to see if new information has been added to the website by group members. If there is new info, the program updates a news feed that goes out to all members, who will see the news on their Facebook home pages the next time they log in. And young people log into social-networking sites with great frequency.
Schmoyer said Facebook works as an outreach tool as well, because online friends of the students see updates on what is going on at their friend's church. If an activity sounds interesting to them, then they might visit.
Like Tadlock, Schmoyer finds Facebook to be a valuable tool for keeping in touch with his students and what is going on in their lives.
“Kids put so much of their lives on there,” he said. “It is really telling [about] what the kid is [like] outside of church.”
Tadlock uses Facebook to send out event reminders to his students. Through the site, he can find out who will be attending, who won't and who might.
He also created a Facebook group for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. He didn't invite anyone to join, but it has grown anyway.
CBF officials didn't know he formed the group—but once the organization found out, it gave him access to the CBF logo. Tadlock said they have been supportive ever since—even adding a link to the Facebook group on the main Fellowship website.
Tadlock said now “we are connected, but not in the traditional way.” As of latest count, the CBF network had 806 members.
Are Christians relying too much on a commercial site not specifically geared toward their needs? After all—just like other major Internet domains—Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites have their unsavory precincts.
But, Tadlock said, while other similar sites specifically geared toward Christians are popping up, he has not found them to be that useful. He believes it's more effective for Christians to reach out to the culture around them by taking the best of that culture and adapting it to holy uses.
But one Christian site that is catching on through word of mouth is MyChurch.org—a social-networking site built around congregations. It currently has about 21,000 churches on it from across the United States and Canada, and about 150,000 individual members. The congregations range from Baptist to non-denominational to Salvation Army.
“It is kind of a MySpace for churches,” said Jon Suh, one of the founders. The site was created about a year and half ago to fill a need that Suh's congregation, The River Church in San Jose, Calif., felt.
The River was using a variety of online sites—such as Evite, Yahoo! Groups and the photo-sharing site Flickr—to provide online content or to notify members of church activities. Church leaders decided to form an online community that would incorporate all those functions into one site.
MyChurch users can send individual or group messages, announce prayer requests, share photos, share audio files, comment on sermons and organize and advertise events to others in their congregation. Suh said it's used especially for small groups within the church.
The only doctrinal requirement that qualifies churches to use the site is their adherence to the Nicene Creed, one of the earliest affirmations of Christian faith. But MyChurch doesn't preclude anyone from making member profiles and joining a particular congregation's page.
Churches police themselves, Suh said. Every church has a moderator that watches the content on the congregation's page as well as keeping tabs on members' pages as well.
“We don't enforce too many hard policies,” he said. “We provide lots of tools for users to report content.”
People already were building networks for their churches on secular sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Suh said he doesn't have a problem with that, because it's good for Christians to be out in the secular world, pointing others toward God.
In fact, his site has a Facebook application. It allows church members to put content from MyChurch on their Facebook profiles, letting their Facebook friends know what is going on in their church. About 15,000 MyChurch congregations have added this application, Suh said.
“I think it's just changed the way we are interacting and the way we are doing things,” Tadlock said. “I think it literally has changed our culture.”